Chanelle Adams
∗1992, US
Chanelle Adams (1992, Montclair, United States) lives and works in Berlin. She is a researcher, writer, and artist, currently holding the position of Postdoctoral Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, where she is investigating the lives and afterlives of extinct giant tortoises in the Southwest Indian Ocean. Her research traces how crisis, empire, and environmental change shape the classification, circulation, and transformation of botanical and zoological species across space and time.Her artistic practice includes site-specific performative walks and tours that take place in gardens, parks, and city institutions around the world, inviting collective witnessing of the interconnected impacts of colonialism, ecocide, and capitalism that continue to haunt the history of everyday places. Adams has published widely on botanical culture, natural history, and the wellness industry. She holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Lausanne and is a graduate of Brown University and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. She is also a Fulbright scholar.
On one of the last privately held plots with an expansive, largely untouched garden at the outskirts of Ortisei, Adams introduces an excavation as both gesture and inquiry. A deep cut into the ground interrupts the smooth surface of an otherwise idyllic landscape, exposing soil as archive rather than backdrop.
Working in dialogue with geological research on the Dolomites’ formation, the project reflects on the mountains as remnants of ancient marine life, shaped by the Permian-Triassic extinction. The act of digging becomes a way of accessing deep time, revealing that what appears stable or “natural” is in fact layered with histories of crisis, transformation, and loss.
Framed through the visual language of archaeology and scientific display, the work oscillates between research and speculation. The excavation reads as both investigation and disturbance—raising questions about authorship, extraction, and the desire to uncover meaning in landscapes that have long been composed, curated, and idealised.
